


DNR

by Asynca



Series: Ready, Set, Go! - Speed Prompts [8]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-21 14:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7391065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Speed prompt, written in 65 minutes. From a Tumblr prompt by nightprince: "In the heat of battle, Widowmaker is revived by Mercy and a nearby Tracer never expected to hear the voice of Amelie begging someone to kill her."<br/>I did a twist on this one: from Mercy's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	DNR

 

* * *

There are some things medical school can't prepare you for.

I came out of college, almost half the age of all my colleagues, bright-faced and filled with hope about all the lives I was going to save and the changes I was going to make in the world. Earth would be a better place when I was done with it, I decided. I used to gaze up at my ceiling at night and imagine all the cures I would find and all the technology I would develop that would take millions and millions of lives.

No child would even suffer like I did again: because I wouldn't let their parents die.

I got a reality check the first time a mother of four young children died at my hands because I was unable to figure out a way to save her. The next, when a three year old bled to death on my operating table while I _desperately_ searched for the severed artery and found it too late. It was surreal. In only twenty minutes, a plump, giggling toddler had become cool and glassy-eyed, dead forever. One beautiful life with a beautiful future snuffed out.

I slowly learnt that sometimes you do everything you can for someone— _everything_ —and still they end up cold and still in front of you, and all you can hear is the wailing of their families when you stop trying to revive them.

When the Swiss Overwatch facility blew up with all of my instant healing and advanced revival technology destroyed within it, I fell to the floor and _wept_. I _wept_ for all the children who were going to lose parents that I could have saved if only the facility hadn't been destroyed. I wept for that lost dream I had of changing the world.

And even though I've endured all of this, even though I'm approaching 40 and I've been a doctor for nearly 20 years, there are _still_ somethings that medical school didn't prepare me for.

Like Amélie.

She hates being called that, I know, but she's still Amélie to me. I still look at her and see the face of the woman I used to go to the ballet with in my 20s, whose husband was a beautiful, open man with a warm laugh, a kind smile and a brilliant mind. It would be hard enough to revive her anyway because it's always difficult to work on a friend, but that's not why I struggle with it.

Not at all.

Today, I see her out of the corner of my eye, grapping up to a ledge above the objective. She's hardly raised her rifle before an _enormous_ GPS-guided spear soars through the air and impales her, knocking her off the ledge.

She makes eye contact with me for a split second as she falls, mouth open in shock, hands clasping uselessly at the spear through her middle. My heart _stops_. I'm not sure if it's her voice or my voice that I hear crying out.

I'm over there in an instant, pulling out the spear (to a _torrent_ of dark, partially oxygenated blood that begins to pool around her), and her hands push weakly at me. " _Please_ ," she mumbles. " _Please…_ "

Patients are always disoriented when they're in hypovolemic shock. _It's just that_ , I tell myself, charging my staff. _She's just in shock_. "It's alright," I tell her. "I'm here."

She'll be unconscious in a few seconds. "No," she says, her speech slurring. "Angela, no. _Stop._ " The familiar sound of her saying my real name _does_ make me stop for a moment. She _brightens_. "Please, just let me die," she tells me. "Let me finally be the nothing that I am."

God. I feel sick to my stomach. I try to speak but no sound comes out of my mouth, all can I think of is the sound of her beautiful, musical laugh—a sound I haven't heard in years—and her the way her face looked when she'd come rushing me to me in the middle of the night to tell me that Gérard had asked her to marry him. Our arms around each other as we hugged. The joyful tears that filled her eyes as she told me all their plans for the future.

There are tears in her eyes now, too. And in mine.

"I just want to be with him," she murmurs, "I just want this nightmare to be over…"

There is _no chance in hell_ that I will grant her that wish. Not while I know our Amélie is still in there, trapped, beaten, terrified and horrified by what her own hands have done. Reconditioning fades over time, and I will wait _as long_ as I need to for her. I'll be here for her when she returns.

I break my code of medical ethics and ignore her wish, charging her full of nanoparticles to revive her.

When the glow fades she's still lying there, eyes fluttering open. It takes her a moment to orient herself, and in that moment I always hope I'll see a smile, rosy cheeks— _Amélie_. But I don't see a smile. Her skin is still cyanotic, and she just looks _disappointed_. She pulls herself to stand anyway.

I try to joke. "No thanks necessary," I tell her as brightly as I can.

She _scowls_. "Why would I thank someone for providing a service I don't want?" she asks bitterly, gives me one final hard look, and then grapples off somewhere above.

I stand there for a moment, still feeling sick. So, sick, and trapped in a memory of us laughing together.

It's then that I spot Lena standing nearby, clearly watching us. God, her expression… She shakes her head silently at me—at what she's just seen?—and turns to hide her face before she disappears. I'm not sure what's stung her more: that her friend, that the woman she used to look up to and idolise wants to die, or that despite Lena's best efforts and her beautiful heart, that she may never replace Gérard.

With both of them gone, it's silent. It's just me standing in a pool of blood, feeling sick.

My patient is alive—I should be overjoyed, but I'm not.

Medical school taught how to fix people. How to patch them up, how to bring them back to health, and how to help people live long, full lives with the people they love. It taught me how to talk to children, how to ease old bones and how to use new technology to improve outcomes so people can keep doing the things they love. But it could _never_ prepare me for what I've faced.

It never taught me how to deal with someone I love with all my heart _begging_ me to let them die.


End file.
